LSAT Plateau - how long was yours, and how did you overcome it? Forum

[RamTitan]

So, I've been stuck in the 167-171 range for the past 15 tests I've taken, which were spaced out over the span of 5 months worth of studying. Who has experienced similar plateaus, and what did you do to break them? I've started writing out why the correct answer is correct and the wrong answers are wrong for questions I've missed for almost a month now, and I haven't seen a ton of improvement yet.

Edit - I had a 146 diagnostic, and managed to raise my score to a 169 within 4 months. I don't believe in a natural limit for improvement with this test, but I'm starting to wonder....

[somethingElse]

Have you done any of these things?

- BRing the shit out of your PTs

- Meditating

- Eating healthy/working out

- Reading significantly denser (relative to LSAT material) shit

- Taking two or so weeks off whilst doing the above things (Minus the BRing of course) and not thinking about the LSAT at all

- Articulating your strategies in a Word Document/Notepad for each section and question type as well as general strategies, and analyzing how well you are using them/how well they are working

[RamTitan]

Have you done any of these things?

- BRing the shit out of your PTs

- Meditating

- Eating healthy/working out

- Reading significantly denser (relative to LSAT material) shit

- Taking two or so weeks off whilst doing the above things (Minus the BRing of course) and not thinking about the LSAT at all

- Articulating your strategies in a Word Document/Notepad for each section and question type as well as general strategies, and analyzing how well you are using them/how well they are working

I BR, but not in the traditional sense; I typically go for an hour long walk after taking a test (my form of meditation), and then BR the problems I got wrong and the ones I was on the fence about. Do you think I should just BR the whole test?

Bodybuilding is one of my hobbies, so I workout 6 days a week and eat healthy. However, I do drink beer one day a week......might need to cut that out for a variety of reasons, but I feel like it keeps my sanity in check.

I read 1-2 books a week, which range from fiction to self-improvement to history and politics. I don't read much about science, which is probably my biggest reading weakness.

I've taken a few breaks here and there. I don't feel burnt out whatsoever. I feel invigorated actually. And I do feel that I am getting better in some respects; for example, today I only missed two LR problems, zero AR problems, but 9 RC problems. Typically I've been missing 3-6 in LR, 0-3 in AR, and anywhere from 2 to 8 in RC.

I have never articulated my strategies in a word document. That sounds like a super interesting exercise.

[somethingElse]

Yeah the whole thing with BRing is that you go over questions you're not 100% sure about before you score them. And not only 100% sure you got the question correct, but that you 100% know why each wrong answer is wrong.

So as you're doing a PT or a timed section, and you come across a question that you aren't 100% sure about (either about the correct answer or one or more of the wrong ones) you circle it. Then, before you even score your PT and see what you got, you go over those circled problems again and take as much time as you need on them. I would personally recommend being liberal with circling questions. 100% means 100%; you should be able to articulate why each wrong answer is wrong as you are doing the timed section/PT, and make it a legit reason. By this I mean, don't just eliminate an answer because it is "out of scope." Actually know why and how it is out of scope. If you can't come up with that detailed of a reason, circle it because there's something you can learn from that question still. You should know each question of a section/PT so well that you could write up a lsathacks type explanation for it.

Since this is a relatively involved process, I would recommend not BRing right after you're done with a PT. At least take a few hours or so. I personally rarely BRed a full PT on the same day, I almost always did it the next day.

Meditating is something that should be a daily habit, not just on PT days, to really get the full benefits. A great book to start off with is "Wherever you go, there you are" by John Kabat-Zinn. THere's plenty of others that will suffice though, meditating really isn't all that complicated. But as I'm sure you know with bodybuilding, its something that has to be done on a consistent basis and is something you can't half-ass if you want to get significant benefits.

As long as the books you're reading are way denser than LSAT material you should be good; I'm of the opinion that the subject/content is less important. As long as whatever you're reading makes the LSAT seem like elementary school type reading you should be good.

Taking a break isn't so much about preventing burn out (though that's a damn good reason to take one) as much as it is about internalizing your strategies and being able to evaluate them more clearly once you return from the break.

One thing I forgot to mention for AR: Sudoku. Start doing a few sudoku puzzles per day and it will help with AR. I would recommend not doing super tough sudoku though because eventually you have to start writing out possibilities and doing some shit that is just not useful because of the relative simplicity of AR games. AR is not like RC in this sense in my opinion.

Yeah the word document thing is helpful for seeing what's working and what isn't working, and also for just making your strategies consistent as possible.

[RamTitan]

Yeah the whole thing with BRing is that you go over questions you're not 100% sure about before you score them. And not only 100% sure you got the question correct, but that you 100% know why each wrong answer is wrong.

So as you're doing a PT or a timed section, and you come across a question that you aren't 100% sure about (either about the correct answer or one or more of the wrong ones) you circle it. Then, before you even score your PT and see what you got, you go over those circled problems again and take as much time as you need on them. I would personally recommend being liberal with circling questions. 100% means 100%; you should be able to articulate why each wrong answer is wrong as you are doing the timed section/PT, and make it a legit reason. By this I mean, don't just eliminate an answer because it is "out of scope." Actually know why and how it is out of scope. If you can't come up with that detailed of a reason, circle it because there's something you can learn from that question still. You should know each question of a section/PT so well that you could write up a lsathacks type explanation for it.

Since this is a relatively involved process, I would recommend not BRing right after you're done with a PT. At least take a few hours or so. I personally rarely BRed a full PT on the same day, I almost always did it the next day.

Meditating is something that should be a daily habit, not just on PT days, to really get the full benefits. A great book to start off with is "Wherever you go, there you are" by John Kabat-Zinn. THere's plenty of others that will suffice though, meditating really isn't all that complicated. But as I'm sure you know with bodybuilding, its something that has to be done on a consistent basis and is something you can't half-ass if you want to get significant benefits.

As long as the books you're reading are way denser than LSAT material you should be good; I'm of the opinion that the subject/content is less important. As long as whatever you're reading makes the LSAT seem like elementary school type reading you should be good.

Taking a break isn't so much about preventing burn out (though that's a damn good reason to take one) as much as it is about internalizing your strategies and being able to evaluate them more clearly once you return from the break.

One thing I forgot to mention for AR: Sudoku. Start doing a few sudoku puzzles per day and it will help with AR. I would recommend not doing super tough sudoku though because eventually you have to start writing out possibilities and doing some shit that is just not useful because of the relative simplicity of AR games. AR is not like RC in this sense in my opinion.

Yeah the word document thing is helpful for seeing what's working and what isn't working, and also for just making your strategies consistent as possible.

One question about the BR; does that mean you didn't score your tests until a day later? That would make me go crazy!!!! I find that if I score it and go back to BR it a few hours later I don't remember the correct letter choice anyways, so I feel like it's still a BR. But, maybe I'm mistaken.

Definitely going to check out that book...thanks for the rec!

somethingelse, you're a saint for all of the advice you've given me (and presumably others who are reading this stuck in similar situations).

[somethingElse]

That's correct, you wouldn't know your score until the next day under that situation. But I mean let's say you take the PT at 8:30 am. If you were to go back at like 5 pm and BR it that's probably plenty of time. My whole reasoning for why I personally waited was so that I would have enough energy/motivation to really give a solid BRing effort. It could of course be different for you and you might not need as much time in between. The point is to have a 100% effort when you BR. I know what you mean though, lol - I'd be lying if I didn't score my PTs a couple times before BRing. However there are ways to do that where you only see your score without seeing how many you missed per section/which ones you got wrong. I believe 7sage has a resource for that. And eventually, after lots and lots of PTs, I personally wasn't all that interested in my score as much as I was making sure my strategies were consistent/working.

In a perfect world though I would still wait to score until after you BR; I say this because if you know you only missed a few questions you might not get as much out of the BR as you would otherwise, since you know that you probably got most of the questions you circled right. Knowing your score beforehand could also put you into a mindset that "Oh I did super well so I don't need to try as hard on the BRing." That sort of thing. Truly not knowing how you did makes you really analyze the questions you circled that much more.

No worries though glad to help!

[lawschoolgirl312]

how do you BR reading comp??

[Dante181]

During the month before the December test, I made sure that I got 8+ hours of sleep every night for the first time in many years. Who knows if this had much impact on anything, but I do think it improved my focus and I went from PTing mostly 173/174 leading up to the October administration with a 167 on the test to PTing mostly 179/180 leading up to the December administration with a 179 on the test.

[RamTitan]

how do you BR reading comp??

I redo any passage where I missed more than two questions. For ones where I missed one, I just redo the problem. I typically either get every question or seriously mess-up a passage. I'm finding that this is by far my weakest section.

[RamTitan]

During the month before the December test, I made sure that I got 8+ hours of sleep every night for the first time in many years. Who knows if this had much impact on anything, but I do think it improved my focus and I went from PTing mostly 173/174 leading up to the October administration with a 167 on the test to PTing mostly 179/180 leading up to the December administration with a 179 on the test.

That's very interesting.......I typically already sleep 8 hours a night though. However, I wonder if drinking alcohol once a week is harming me? I know that even one night of consumption can wreck your sleep cycle.

[ticklemesilly]

I never did overcome it. I basically exhausted all possible practice test problems. Doing them over again didn't help as much.